Karen Nolan: Pushing the mom button

Three weeks after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and I am more resolved than ever that something must be done about gun violence.

In fact, I've been feeling so strongly about it that I had to ask myself why I am so consumed by it.

One article I read suggested that such events can trigger post-traumatic stress disorder reactions. I lived through a traumatic event similar to Sandy Hook when I was a child, so I figured I might be re-experiencing some of those emotions.

Then I stumbled onto a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which shows that women in 2012 were much more closely following stories about gun violence than were men.

Fifty percent of men, but 63 percent of women, told Pew researchers they were paying "very close" attention to the Newtown, Conn., shooting. After the Colorado theater shooting, 41 percent of men, but 55 percent of women, said they were following it "very closely." The same disparity showed up after the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida nearly a year ago: only 29 percent of men, but 40 percent of women, followed it closely.

What is it about these cases that piques women's interest but not men's? I think it has something to do with motherly instincts.

Martin was a teenager and many of the theater victims were young people. Twenty of the Sandy Hook victims were children, and all of the adults killed were women who were caring for children in some fashion.

But it's more than identifying with the victims. To my ears, many of the callous responses from the gun-worshipers among us remind me of tantrums thrown by 3-year-olds: "You can't tell me what to do -- I am the boss of my own self."

It makes the mom in me want to take their guns away and send them to their rooms until they are ready to come out and play nicely.

I'm not seriously interested in taking away everyone's guns, though. I don't have a problem with people using them to hunt game or kill rattlesnakes or go target-shooting.

What I have a problem with is irresponsibility: People who buy guns for those who shouldn't have them. People who leave guns lying around where others can get ahold of them. And I don't think we need private citizens stockpiling high-powered weapons and ammunition intended only for the killing of other human beings.

Data tells us that firearms are the second-leading cause of injury deaths (after motor vehicle crashes) in the United States, accounting for 67 percent of homicides and half of all suicides. For every two people killed by a firearm, five more are hurt -- and taxpayers foot at least half of those costs, which reach into the billions of dollars.

Maybe there's nothing wrong with me for feeling so strongly about this, after all. Perhaps we ought to be wondering about those who don't want to change this situation at all.